Electronics Arts has closed the group responsible for SimCity, Spore and The Sims.

Maxis Emeryville was founded in 1987 by Will Wright and Jeff Braun and SimCity and proved a smash hit for the company. The Sims, was produced by Will Wright directly following his company's acquisition by publishing giant EA in 1997, and took things down to a micro level by allowing the player direct control of a single household living in the SimCity world.

Its SimCity 2013, had numerous problems ranging from terrible AI and buggy gameplay to the instance althoug much of the problem was the game absolutely required a live connection to EA's servers to perform gameplay processing and could not operate as an offline.

Sims 4 and the Sims Studio, has also been savaged by fans for launching without features common to previous titles in the series. Spore, developed by Maxis Emeryville as a life simulator, also failed to achieve the sales for which EA had been hoping.

It a statement EA said it was consolidating Maxis IP development to its studios in Redwood Shores, Salt Lake City, Helsinki and Melbourne locations as we close our Emeryville location.'Maxis continues to support and develop new experiences for current Sims and SimCity players, while expanding our franchises to new platforms and developing new cross-platform IP.

'These changes do not impact our plans for The Sims. Players will continue to see rich new experiences in The Sims 4, with our first expansion pack coming soon along with a full slate of additional updates and content in the pipeline.'

A series of social media posts captured by fan portal Beyond Sims indicates that a small number of employees have accepted relocation packages to move to EA's headquarters and continue development of the rebooted SimCity franchise.

CFO Blake Jorgensen hinted at the 2015 Technology, Internet & Media Conference that Titanfall sequel (Titanfall 2) will "probably" be a bigger footprint than just a single platform.

This confirms what Respawn c-founder Vince Zampella said last year when the game was only released for the Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC.

It is unknown if Titanfall 2 will be a next-gen only release meaning that it will be coming out for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and PC only this time around. Rumors lead us to believe that Titanfall 2 was already in the planning stages and the game would be targeting a 2016 after sales were a successful enough for a sequel.

As for the future of Titanfall we expect that we will hear a lot more about that at E3. Some are wondering if Microsoft might still be willing to write a big check to keep it Microsoft exclusive, but it is doubtful that EA would not want to get Titanfall on the PlayStation 4 later this year.

The beta for Battlefield Hardline is pretty popular on the PlayStation 4. How popular you might ask?

Well, it so popular that PS4 users are seeing errors that "Matchmaking Failed – Could not find a server to join". It is not that there is a problem with the network play, the issue is that the PlayStation 4 servers for Hardline are at max capacity and there currently are no free slots.

What EA says about the issue is a little interesting. They apparently have limited the number of players per platform in order to stress-test the platform. In other words, they are trying to determine how many players each server is able to support. EA says that the PS4 Hardline players peeked with over 132287 players in the last 24 hour period. That is impressive for a beta.

EA says that they are working on keeping up with the demand and adding more capacity as they are able. The good news for EA is that it would seem there is a lot of interest in Hardline which could indicate sales boon for the game.

Now that the Hardline beta has been out, we have to watch everyone pick apart not the game, but the graphically presentation.

The long and the short of it is that the Xbox One version is still rendering at 720p and the PlayStation 4 version is still rendering at 900p. Nothing different from what Battlefield 4 was doing with the Frostbite Engine when we saw it released alongside the next-gen consoles.

While we know that this is still a beta, we have to wonder how much additional time is left really to optimize Hardline prior to actual release? If we had to guess there is now much to do and the majority of the time left isn't going to the improvement of the graphics. Still we expected that Frostbite 3 would be better optimized by now on the consoles.

We also have to wonder on the Xbox One side if they are taking advantage of the most recent optimizations that have been made which have gone on to improve other. Although I have enjoyed playing Hardline, I can't say that I am pleased with graphics that have not evolved much from the release of the console.

The beta for Battlefield Hardline has finally arrived. It is an open beta and your chance to kick the tires prior to the release of Hardline in March.

You can play the beta on everything, including the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PC. (The only thing you can't play it on is the Wii U and a version was never planned for that console.)

In our short time looking at the Hardline beta it is good to see that Viscereal took the comments from the Alpha to heart and has crafted the fastest Battlefield ever. It looks good and plays good. In some ways it still feels like a Battlefield game and in other ways it does not.

The short five day run for the beta is perhaps the most disappointing. For those that have jobs it is going to be hard to get in all of the Hardline play possible before the beta ends.

When Electronic Arts told us that Ghost Games would be skipping its 2014 Need for Speed release, we didn't understand why.

Now we know why and that is so they could develop a new Need for Speed that is really special, but that kind of development takes time.

EA CEO Andrew Wilson said in his Q3 FY15 earnings call that the new Need for Speed has long been in development at Ghost Games and it looks "spectacular" and we will see it when it arrives in 2015 later this year. According to Marcus Nilsson, "this is the Need for Speed game that fans have been asking for." We will see.

As for Star Wars Battlefront, the release of the game is on track and should be in alignment with the new Star Wars movie rollout. We should expect it to arrive before Xmas. It is said to be shaping up to be quite a title and it is being called the ultimate Star Wars battle experience by those who have seen it.

EA promises more specifics in the weeks ahead, which we believe means E3. No word on the Skate franchise coming to next-gen, but we are still hearing that this is a go. We also now have it confirmed that PGA Tour will not make release till FY16 which means that it will be released sometime between April and June of 2015.

The new PGA Tour golf game that will be powered by the Frostbite 3 engine does not appear on EA's Q4 release schedule.

The first PGA release since EA dropped Tiger Woods still says on the web site that it is scheduled for release this spring, but since it not on the current release schedule we believe that a delay announcement is coming.

We have not heard much about the new PGA Tour title since E3 last year. Since it is a new direction with a new engine, we know that it will take a while to get the new version out the door. Still we have the believe that EA will want to get a release out yet this year, but the publisher has been known to take a year off when necessary to get things right with a franchise before a new release comes out.

Expect to hear something more specific when EA does its investor call, but all of this quiet can't be good news for the franchise.

Whispers over the weekend have revealed that it would seem very likely that the Battlefield Hardline Beta will start on February 3rd according to an Email that was leaked.

The timing seems right given the recent Hardline updates. Speaking of updates we should know if it is correct Wednesday when This Season on Hardline airs.

The Beta for Battlefield Hardline is quite a big deal for both publisher Electronic Arts and developer Viscreal Games. With the delays and retooling of the project, EA has a lot riding on trying to establish Hardline as an additional Battlefield franchise from which to develop from. This beta should give EA and Viscreal if the retooled Hardline based on feedback from the Alpha testers is the game that people actually want to play.

The beta this time around will be coming to Xbox which was different from the alpha which was restricted to PlayStation and PC. Early previews and screenshots seem to show quite a different game and play from what we first saw. Still it does seem to have quite a bit to keep players engaged. We will see.

Visceral has announced that they will be dropping new info each week on Battlefield Hardline till release.

Fans can tune-in each Wednesday till launch where they can find out more of the behind the scenes of the development of Hardline as well as details about game modes, weapons, and all things Hardline.

Next week Visceral has teased that they will reveal more about the upcoming Beta test for Hardline. From what we understand, unlike the first testing of Hardline, the beta test this time will be available for all platforms. Last time around access was limited only to PlayStation 4 and PC.

Hardline is planned for release on March 17th in North America on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PC. It is planned for release in Europe on March 20th. These are the new confirmed release dates that were announced after Visceral went back to the drawing board after hearing feedback from the PlayStation 4 and PC testing. Battlefield Hardline was originally scheduled to be released in October of last year. Visceral believes the additional time has given them the ability to address feedback and build the game that players want to play.

The next Battlefield title after the release of Hardline will be a military-themed title was the word for Electronic Arts CFO Blake Jorgensen. While he did not confirm if the new Battlefield title would be called Battlefield 5, he said that it would be a return to a military-style Battleifled game and it will be a fun new Battlefield.

Speaking at the 2014 UBS Global Technology Conference, Jorgensen’s comments are some of the first regarding the next Battlefield offering. While not confirmed, it is thought that Hardline which was supposed to be a 2014 release, is now scheduled to arrive in March.

Star Wars Battlefront (3) which is also in development by Battlefield developer DICE is likely a late 2015 holiday release to tie in with the new Star Wars film. With this confirmation, it would seem that Battlefield 5 (At least that is what we are calling it right now) will be a fall or holiday 2016 offering. With this longer development cycle we have to think that DICE should be able to avoid some of the teething problems that it experienced with the release of Battlefield 4.